Strong Neighborhoods Initiative Purpose

The Strong Neighborhoods Initiative Purpose is to build Strong Neighborhoods by developing community leadership and working collaboratively with residents to achieve the delivery of City Services and Neighborhood Priorities.

The desired improvements in livability are defined by the outcomes of delivery of neighborhood priorities, effective services, and the development of community leadership. The core strategy is to provide meaningful and visible change in each neighborhood through five initiatives. Each of these initiatives has a “double” bottom line, to produce results and to build leadership.

Affordable Housing: the preservation of existing affordable housing stock by working with non-profit groups and neighborhood leaders to implement a wide range of reinvestment strategies. These include rehabilitation through home improvement grants, community paint days and private investments.

Cleaner Neighborhoods: through the efforts of the Code Enforcement Driveway Team, increased neighborhood clean ups, anti-graffiti and anti-litter campaigns build resident capacity to make their own neighborhoods a more beautiful place.

Safer and more attractive residential streets: through traffic calming, sidewalk replacement and repair, street tree planting, improved street lighting, and educating citizens to take greater responsibility for the safety and attractiveness of their streets.

Vital Business Districts with new facades and streetscapes, and stronger business associations, support small business owners in growing their business and connecting with resources, encouraging entrepreneurship.

New Parks and Community Centers: construct parks and neighborhood centers each with a cadre of dedicated residents involved in the ongoing operations and maintenance. The projects delivered first are those that are already well under way.

Strong Neighborhoods Initiative Outcomes

• Neighoorhood Priorities Delivered On-Time and On-Budget
• Effective Delivery of Neighborhood Services
• Effective Community Leadership and Partnership with Residents

Applying Lessons Learned Citywide

The lessons of Strong Neighborhoods Initiative suggest a roadmap for transforming the way the City works with all of its neighborhoods. Using the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative as a laboratory the lessons learned should be applied to the rest of the city. By leveraging resources and looking at issues from the perspective of residents a more efficient and responsive service delivery system is being achieved. The following are six key “lessons learned” that have helped to change the City’s service delivery system and bring integrated work plans throughout the organizations.

Organize with neighborhoods as the building block: for both community leaders and City staff, the neighborhood, (or coalition of neighborhoods), is an effective organizing concept. On the neighborhood side the creation of Neighborhood Advisory Committees proved to be an effective way to create neighborhood identity and action. The NACs serve as a guiding coalition that is instrumental in creating the plans, and is equally crucial to the effective implementation of those plans. Similarly, on the City side the organization of staff into neighborhood teams has proved to be an effective tool for connecting staff with the real impact of the work they do. Effective project delivery requires on-going collaboration between City staff and NACs to ensure that the outcome desired by the neighborhood is achieved.

Build on existing neighborhood strengths and assets: organize an initial guiding coalition (the Neighborhood Advisory Committee) for each neighborhood and map out the assets and strengths of each area. This NAC should bring together neighborhoods, business, schools, faith community, and serviceprovides in a single forum.

Develop clear priorities through collaborative neighborhood planning. It is critical the neighborhood plans be driven by the community and that clear, measurable objectives be set through the planning process. Staff must work hand-in-hand with neighborhood leaders to provide technical assistance in the development of those plans to ensure that the desired project deliverables are achievable.

Establish accountability: assign Project Managers and recruit community liaisons for each priority action. Work to develop well defined project scopes, cost estimates, and action plans for each priority. A system for tracking and evaluating the performance on a regular basis is an important tool to ensure that projects proceed on time and on budget.

Connect priorities to resources by integrating priorities into existing City Service Areas (CSA) business plans and departmental work plans. Work with project managers to identify appropriate funding strategy for each priority. Bring together a project team with the needed internal resources for each priority. Immediately launch implementation focusing on quick victories such as clean ups, housing rehabilitation, traffic calming, service changes, and small capital projects. Celebrate results and build momentum for larger capital projects and service change goals. Intentionally seek to change both policy and service delivery to meet issues emerging in multiple neighborhoods. Some changes in service delivery emerging from Strong Neighborhoods include Code Enforcement driveway team, the vehicle spotters program and improved street sweeping enforcement.

Develop neighborhood and City leadership by continually identifying new leaders, supporting existing leaders, celebrating wins, training, networking, and seeking to create a true partnership. Create an ongoing leadership network that connects leaders to each other, helps train and support them, and provides a forum for dialogue and growth.

In this era of limited resources the focus must be on realigning existing resources and integrating lessons learned into current practice. All levels of the organization must demonstrate a commitment to the Strong Neighborhoods approach. From Senior and Executive staff to front-line staff who do the hard work of service delivery, the entire organization must embrace the concept of neighborhood-driven priority setting and commit to responding to neighborhood needs. Ways of measuring the changes in service delivery and the realignment of resources must be developed along with a more detailed approach to applying these lessons learned.

Citizens or Just Customers?

Treating residents as customers has helped the City improve its service delivery system, but Strong Neighborhoods is about more than that. Organizing neighborhoods is normally thought to be outside the bounds of what local governments do –but the San Jose experience suggests that local governments can do this – in a certain manner – and that this sort of organizing can have a profound positive effect on both the neighborhoods and how local government agencies do their business. By approaching residents as citizens rather than just customers, local government is in a better position to work with them toward the vision of Building Strong Neighborhoods. When residents are engaged as partners and seen, and see themselves, as part of the solution then a collaborative relationship is possible. If, on the other hand, residents are viewed solely as customers then the conversation becomes one of how to satisfy residents' expectations and address residents' problems with city solutions and city resources. The conversation with a customer is an important one and is crucial to improving service delivery. But if it is the only conversation that is taking place, then the underlying dynamic can become adversarial and the opportunity for collaborative change missed.